RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT

News

Extreme cold increasingly rare for Wisconsin, but polar vortex could be more common in warmer climateJanuary 30, 2019 | Wisconsin State Journal

Steve Vavrus was interviewed by several media outlets about the January 2019 “polar vortex” cold surge in the Midwest. His perspectives were featured in NOVA’s Planet Earth newsletter, Climate Nexus, Shepherd Express, and the Wisconsin State Journal. He also appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio, WDET Detroit public radio, and South Korea’s Busan English Radio.

Dr. Steve Vavrus will serve as WICCI's Co-Director. Steve has been involved in WICCI since its beginning, having participated in the Climate, Stormwater, and Milwaukee/Health working groups, and has a long history of work in climate impacts research and outreach. His research interests are very broad, from understanding changes in extreme events, to identifying interactions between the polar regions and mid-latitudes, to modeling human influence on climate going back 4000 years.

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Humans may be reversing the climate clock, by 50 million yearsDecember 10, 2018 | UW Madison

Jack Williams and Kevin Burke were featured in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finding that humans are reversing a long-term cooling trend tracing back at least 50 million years. And it’s taken just two centuries.

US National Parks have experienced more warming than rest of the USSeptember 24, 2018 | UW Madison

Drs. Jack Williams, Fuyao Wang, Michael Notaro, and Dan Vimont of the Center for Climatic Research collaborated with Dr. Patrick Gonzalez of the National Park Service to develop high-resolution historical and future projections of climate change for all of our nation's national parks. Their published study in Environmental Research Letters, which showed that the national parks are warming more than the rest of the country, led to interviews and press coverage by the University of Wisconsin-Madison News, Weather Channel, and Science Daily.

A recent infusion of funding from two sources has re-energized the Wisconsin GLOBE PartnershipSeptember 14, 2018 | The Globe Program

The NASA GLOBE website has a feature article, "A recent infusion of funding from two sources has re-energized the Wisconsin GLOBE partnership," discussing the climate education and research efforts of Michael Notaro, Rose Pertzborn, and Ankur Desai across rural Wisconsin.

A study published in the journal Scientific Reports by Steve Vavrus, Feng He, John Kutzbach, William Ruddiman, and Polychronis Tzedakis, provides new evidence that ancient farming practices led to a rise in the atmospheric emission of the heat-trapping gases carbon dioxide and methane – a rise that has continued since, unlike the trend at any other time in Earth’s geologic history.

The Great Lakes are an epicenter for power production, commerce, recreation, and so much more, but research suggests that they are also becoming a hotbed for climate change. In fact, research from the past two decades has shown intense weather extremes and fluctuations in the area, a trend Michael Notaro, associate director of the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research (CCR), will help to investigate through a three-year grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) Program.

The Great Lakes are an epicenter for power production, commerce, recreation, and so much more, but research suggests that they are also becoming a hotbed for climate change. In fact, research from the past two decades has shown intense weather extremes and fluctuations in the area, a trend Michael Notaro, associate director of the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research (CCR), will help to investigate through a three-year grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) Program.

Michael Notaro was interviewed on the Route 51 show of Wisconsin Public RadioAugust 30, 2018 | Wisconsin Public Radio

Michael Notaro was interviewed on the Route 51 show of Wisconsin Public Radio on the topic of "The Impact of Climate Change on North Central Wisconsin." He discussed the science of climate change, global and local impacts, recent local weather extremes, and mitigation/adaptation efforts, including WICCI and his Baldwin-funded project on enhancing climate science inquiry among students in rural Wisconsin communities.